


Steak-Knife Bomb Disposal

by technically_direct



Series: modern myth AU [2]
Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: A Literal Trojan Horse, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bomb disposal, Canon Disabled Character, Canon Non-Binary Character, F/M, Gratuitous Illiad Spoilers, Humor, Romance, The Fates - Freeform, Written on a Dare, a whole host of cameos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29773404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/technically_direct/pseuds/technically_direct
Summary: Tisiphone gets a boyfriend, confronts a horse, walks her dog, and defuses a bomb. Not necessarily in that order.
Relationships: Ares/Tisiphone
Series: modern myth AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2188302
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36





	Steak-Knife Bomb Disposal

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Jay, for suggesting this pairing. This was, originally, written on essentially a dare, but I did warm up to the pairing pretty fast. 
> 
> Also, I know literally nothing about the technical aspects depicted herein, and literally just guessed based on a book I read several years ago and barely remember. Please do not go build bombs or try and defuse them yourself, that is incredibly dangerous.

They meet in a coffee shop, because given the givens of who she is and how she communicates, a phone call wouldn’t _really_ work.

“You are troubled, child,” Chaos says, staring directly into her soul. Tisiphone hasn’t been a _child_ for _several years_ , but she allows it.

“Mmmm.” She grunts, around her very frothy coffee milkshake.

“Is this related to your sisters?” Chaos’ eyes pierce her own. She kinda wants to throw the drink at him and run from the coffee house, but that would be mean to the employees. “Or… No, but they did exacerbate the situation.”

Tisiphone rolls her eyes, and takes a hard sip of her drink rather than respond.

“Alecto?” They look at her, a little more sharply. “No, Megaera.”

She nods, and tears a little strip of bread off of her croissant, angrily.

“Ah,” Chaos says, after a moment. “The _relationship_.”

She kicks them under the table. Not hard, but firm enough that they know exactly how much she’s holding back.

“Are you _jealous?_ Respond.”

She’s _not_ , but they’re so domineering about it that she’s tempted to just play along and see if Chaos _will_ actually attempt to break up Meg and her two boyfriends. It seems _unlikely_ , but they’re a very tricky sort of person.

She hisses, deep in the back of her throat. Frankly, Meg’s boyfriends are a bit on the boring and sad side for her; the short one with daddy issues who _tries his best_ and the tall one with bleached hair who was sad all the time and pretended towards detachment rather than having a conversation like an actual adult.

And frankly, if _Tisiphone_ is of the opinion that you need more robust lines of communication, it’s a fucking problem.

“Not them, then.” Chaos takes a sip of their drink, some strange roast with pepper in it, and sighs. “Is this, perhaps, about you feeling unfulfilled romantically?”

Tisiphone grabs her drink, and her mangled croissant, and walks out of the café without another word.

\--

There weren’t many jobs you could get—or at least, get and _keep—_ while being nonverbal. Or as good as; she has some days when words are at least slightly less of a chore, but her palate is all kinds of messed up, so phonetically, even on good days, there are just some sounds she physically cannot make.

Which is probably why she found herself working with, essentially, no other humans. She did her time in the army working with explosive ordinance, and then once she lost a finger on her left hand due to shrapnel, she got busted down to paper-pushing, and decided to retire rather than deal with any of the many uppity officers who kept wondering why she _didn’t talk more_.

Now, she was a security consultant, which was a very fancy job title for bodyguard. Which was well suited for her, because it didn’t involve talking, and used some of her skills that weren’t ordinance disposal.

Basically, Meg’s boyfriend’s dad knew a guy, who knew a guy, who was rich as sin and made enemies very easily. Hector was, in many respects, kind of a dick—the kind that came from making impulsive decisions, rather than intent, like how he met his wife on foreign study because he was engaged to her sister—but he paid well, and wasn’t too terrible, so long as you built a tolerance.

(The first and only time he’d offended her on purpose, she took up the habit bringing her dog to work every so often. Her little baby was a wolf-dog that weighed more than most high-schoolers and looked like it could kill a bear. Hector never did that shit again.)

\--

She goes to walk her little baby at like five in the morning, because she lives in the city and the poor dog has a habit of scaring people. The people in her neighborhood were usually pretty alright about the dog and her _not talking_ , but the dog’s big enough that she has to actually go to the park, which is in what could technically be considered a nicer neighborhood, and therefore full of strangers who are weird about it.

So she goes early.

The dog doesn’t have a name, as such, since she can’t exactly call it anything, but gods, does she love it. They go running at the park in the mornings, a few laps before the city wakes up and the sprinklers turn on. 

Usually, her only peers in the park are harried looking finance guys, the kind who drink aggressively chalky smoothies and probably have standing desks. The dog likes to snarl at them to make them run faster, which she can’t get that mad at.

On her third lap around the park, past the pond and the knock-off Brancusi but before the turn next to the weeping willow, a woman sits on a bench, prim and proper and made almost entirely of right angles. In her hands, she holds an embroidery hoop, the large, knobby knuckles on her bony fingers carefully feeding colored thread through.

Tisiphone can’t help it. She looks. And the woman looks up, and stares directly into her eyes, hands not stopping.

The leash goes slack in her hands, the dog coming to a dead stop and walking back, sitting on the wet asphalt and joining her in staring.

The woman continues to stare, hands ever-moving. It feels like she’s staring directly into Tisiphone’s soul, and taking her measure. Assessing.

After a moment that feels like a century, she sets her sewing project down, and leans forward. “Be mindful,” She says, “Of the threads you cut.”

That means _nothing_ , but it sure _feels_ important, so Tisiphone nods.

The woman continues. “The turning of the spindle is unavoidable, but how the string is used is entirely of your own choosing.” She turns back to her embroidery, breaking eye contact. It feels like Tisiphone has just run a mile in wet clothes. “Horses are never truly what they seem.”

The dog pulls at the leash, finally, breaking Tisiphone fully out of her daze. Gods, she thought, jogging away from the strange woman, what the hell did _that_ mean?

\--

Hector pulls her aside as they enter a jewelry store. They don’t let her bring the gun in, which is reasonable, but the metal detector misses the ceramic knife that she has in a holster at the small of her back for just these occasions, and she doesn’t feel the need to call attention to its existence.

“Now, Helen’s birthday is coming up,” Hector says, gesturing vaguely to the store. “That’s why we’re here. I was wondering if you could assist at the party?”

She tilts her head, considering.

“Look,” He says. “It’s next week. And you won’t be serving drinks or anything—I’ve hired help for that—but given, uh, the popularity of our marriage, let’s say,” That was a convenient way of saying that all her relatives wanted him dead, but even if she could speak, Tisiphone wouldn’t bring _that_ up, “There’s a decent chance that something might, uh, happen.”

Tisiphone looked at him sharply.

“Look, Tis,” His voice softens, “I don’t _think_ anything will happen, but you’ll get paid double regardless, and you wouldn’t be doing it alone. It’s just—I want her to have this before things get worse with her family, alright? Her sister, especially.”

Tisiphone can relate. She and Meg get along pretty well—at least when Meg isn’t all wrapped up in both her boyfriends’ personal drama, because there’s a _lot_ —but she can legitimately never think of a pleasant experience with Alecto. The woman was all sharp edges and reveled when folks got cut on them.

After a moment, she nods.

“So, you’re in?”

She nods again.

“Good. Thank you.” He claps her on the shoulder. “So, d’you think Cartier would be a good choice for Helen, or…?”

Tisiphone shrugs. Helen legitimately looked like a damn model in anything; the woman could stop traffic wearing a dress made out of wet paper bags.

\--

“—so, Tis, got any advice? I would ask Alecto, but…” Megaera trails off. “You know what _she’s_ like.”

Tisiphone grabs a piece of sushi with her chopsticks and pops it in her mouth, considering. Thankfully, it wasn’t boy problems this time; Meg was having some issues with her thesis advisor—apparently he kept flaking on her, ‘forgetting’ deadlines, that sort of thing.

She swallowed, and then took a long sip of her water. “Mmmurrrdrr.”

“Tis, _no!”_ Despite that, a smile clawed its way across her face. “That can’t be your solution to _everything.”_

It wasn’t, but it _was_ one of the words she could reliably make without issue, so it had become her go-to answer for a lot of things.

“How’s work going?”

Tisiphone shrugs. There was the party in a few days, which was a bit worrying, but other than that it was the usual routine of staying alert and looking menacing while Hector did whatever it was that guy’s rich enough to buy their own country did; usually it was lunch with his wife, convoluted phone calls about stocks, or shopping trips in expensive cars.

“And your dog?”

Tisiphone smiles. The dog was, of course, excellent.

\--

So, the main problem about working with Hector, other than his general thoughtlessness and ability to make strangers loathe him, was that, fundamentally, he’s very stubborn about very small, stupid things.

No, she and her team can’t put the guests through a metal detector, or even one of those _wand_ things, because it would _ruin the aesthetic._ No, she can’t peek at the presents first and make sure there’s nothing suspicious, because it would _ruin the surprise._ No, it has to be in the private room of an unfamiliar restaurant because _it’s the next big thing._ No, she can’t have an extra planning meeting with her team, because _there’s just so many preparations to do, come on, it’ll be fine._

Gods, she thinks, as she’s meeting her security team at the restaurant before the party, this was not going to be a well-oiled machine. If they were lucky, it’d only be awkward, and noticed by the other bodyguards and security specialists in attendance. Tisiphone is very unaccustomed to being _lucky_.

\--

By the time they notice the bomb, it’s too late.

Not, like, too late to _evacuate,_ but judging by the payload (what looks like plastic explosive and something aerosolized, plus enough rusty nails to build a few barns), it would be logistically impossible to ensure everyone’s safety and just _call the bomb squad_.

Tisiphone ties her hair back—because as much as there’s a timer visible she’s got _over fifteen minutes_ —and gets to work.

How it happened was this:

Helen’s party was well underway, and, like all the other bodyguards in attendance, Tisiphone was situated behind her charge, back to a solid wall, with a clear view of the room. The presents were already displayed in perfectly wrapped glory when they had arrived, courtesy of the catering staff, and as the guests filtered in in formal wear, champagne was popped and appetizers were served.

One of the other bodyguards caught her eye, every so often. He had a dark, angular face, the sides of his head shaved down, and some very piercing eyes, but what really caught her attention was the damn bowie knife he wore, shoulder-holster barely concealed. The man was wearing so much weaponry it was legitimately surprising he didn’t make noise every time he shifted his weight; that spoke of his skill.

By the time the guests had worked their way through dessert (a crème brûlée crusted in a frankly absurd amount of gold leaf, nestled under a tempered chocolate dome), Hector was on his fourth glass of wine, and drunk enough to where he was very carefully enunciating his sentences. Helen wasn’t much better, but at least had the sense to trade off with some water every so often, so she was, at least, the fun kind of drunk rather than the careful kind.

Then began the ceremonial opening of the presents, because of _course_ it had to be a damn production. Tisiphone tuned out after the third or so time that Helen _lost her godsdamn mind_ at an inexplicably ugly piece of jewelry that cost more than she’d make in her life.

About twenty minutes later, she’d started opening the big stuff. Designer patent-leather luggage, an absolutely garish saddle that was ugly enough it couldn’t justify the bespoke craftsmanship, a case of wine bought at auction, labels so faded and peeling it had to be at least halfway to vinegar.

The last object was, of course, the largest. Helen was a natural performer, and knew how to keep the audience riveted, but no one was looking at it _knowingly_ , no one had that gleam of _anticipation_ in their eyes.

Ah, shit, Tisiphone thought, that’s a bad sign.

Helen tore the paper off with reckless abandon, the ripping noise of quality wrapping paper filling the room for a brief moment. When the object was finally free from its papery tomb, you could hear a pin drop in the private dining room.

“What the _fuck?”_ Helen said, after a moment of staring at it.

Staring back at her, contorted into a mockery of an anatomical pose, was a wooden sculpture of a horse, stained dark, its glass, unblinking eyes staring out into the room blankly.

“I _mean,”_ She said, after a moment to school her face, “Who gave me this? I just want to thank you for your _unique_ taste.”

No one spoke up.

Something was bothering Tisiphone about the horse. Like, grated, it was hideous in the way that many artistic renderings of horses are—the mouth almost _too_ expressive for teeth that large, ears folded back, rope-like braids in the mane that fell in all the wrong places—but it wasn’t _that_. Something was off about the proportions; the midsection of the horse ballooned out, made even more obvious by the way it was posed, rearing onto its hind legs.

Helen reached forward, and tugged something out of the horse’s mouth, from between its creepy, wooden teeth. The piece of paper was small, but as she unfolded it, her face went slack. “We need to evacuate the restaurant.”

“…What?” A guest asked, softly.

Helen dropped the paper, blinked hard, pulled her heels off, and bodily hauled Hector towards the door. “It’s been lovely, but I’m afraid that there’s an emergency, and we simply must go.”

“C’mon, Hel’,” One of the guests said, an overly tanned woman who wasn’t _not_ a mob wife, “What’s up?”

Okay, Tis thought, this is clearly going nowhere fast. She walked a few steps over to the fire door, and opened it, the alarm beginning to blare throughout the restaurant.

“Thanks, Tis!” Helen yelled, running towards the exit, the slit in her silk satin dress catching on the table and ripping even further up her hip. “There’s a bomb in the horse!”

Ah, shit, Tisiphone thought, this is why she wanted to vet the damn gifts, but _noooo_. Like, granted, she’s probably being a little too blasé about the whole _bomb_ thing, but that used to be her job _anyway._

The rest of the party sprang into action, running for the exits as tables overturned and food went crashing onto the floor, lukewarm lobster tail and barely set custard being ground into the carpet.

Tisiphone picked her way towards the horse statue, care not to jar it from its position. It was even uglier up close.

One of the other bodyguards joined her, the one she’d been trading glances with all evening.

“So,” he said, reaching a hand out and feeling around inside the sculpted wooden mouth, “What’s a fine woman like you doing in a place like this?”

Tisiphone rolled her eyes, and began feeling around the edges of the wooden stomach, looking for some sort of catch or hinge. If there was a bomb, it made sense that it would be in the _weird, big part_ of the horse. You know, the spot where something was obviously _hiding_.

“Not a talker, are you?” The man’s voice was low and deep, and if he wasn’t so cheesy, Tisiphone would probably be into it.

She huffed a laugh, and the noise came out as distorted as it usually did.

“…Ah.” He said, falling into a somewhat awkward silence as he felt around the unfortunately very detailed horse-tongue. Thankfully, due to being essentially non-verbal, Tisiphone was pretty used to awkward silences during conversations. “Wait, I think— _here_ ,”

With a twist of his fingers around one of the large, back molars of the horse, a click sounded, and the midsection of the horse popped open on near-invisible hinges.

The bomb itself, once she got a good look at it, was fairly rudimentary. Most bombs _were_ —essentially, they were just circuits that exploded, with some sort of timed fuse or through direct contact. The problem was that folks who built bombs _knew this_ , and tended to make them either incredibly delicate, riddle them with dead man’s switches and redundant systems, or some combination of the two.

Unfortunately, this rather looked like the third option. If Tisiphone was physically _able_ to swear, colorfully, creatively, and at length, she would have. Lacking that, she just hissed, sharply. 

Tisiphone slipped the hair-tie off her wrist, and massed her blonde curls into a lumpy, messy ponytail, high on the back of her head; she hadn’t defused a bomb since she left the army, and if she had hair on her neck, it’d constantly distract her. Doing this without protective gear was stressful enough, but the hair would just be _one more thing_.

“Well, that’s unfortunate,” The man said, dragging his hand through his hair and clearly holding back a sigh. “Do you have any experience in bomb disposal?”

Tisiphone nodded, and, after a brief second of thought, pulled the other hair tie off of her wrist and offered it to him.

“Ah, thank you,” He grinned, slightly. “I’m Ares, by the way. Figured you should know my name if we’re dealing with explosive ordinance together.”

That made sense, but it’s not like she could do anything _with_ it, so she set it aside for the moment, leaning in to get a closer look at the bomb.

Whoever made it _clearly_ knew what they were doing, although this was one of the rare instances where that was a _good_ thing; shoddily made bombs tended to explode randomly, but judging by the craftsmanship on this one, she could trust the timer, which had a little less than twenty minutes on it.

The main problem, she could already tell, was going to be the failsafes. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to cram the cavity with enough random bits of soldered-in wiring just to make the whole affair far more confusing than it needed to be.

Tisiphone walked over to the head table, and picked up an unused steak knife, before walking back. Time to start cutting some wires.

The first thing that could go was the random line from the timer to the shrapnel. That, she could easily sus out, did _nothing_ , and was an open circuit. She carefully threaded the serrated knife in, and gave a short, sharp pull, disconnecting it before pulling it out of the device.

“My dear,” Ares said, from where he hovered behind her, “I do have a multi-tool, if that would be more useful?”

She turned to face him, bringing a hand up, and turning all but her middle and index finger down, moving them together and apart, while trying to communicate the question with her eyebrows.

“Scissors? No— _pliers._ Yes, it’s a leatherman, would that be helpful?”

Tisiphone nodded emphatically.

“Alright then,” He said, reaching into his front pocket and prying the tool open, before handing it to her, “Here you go.”

Much better. If she was going to have a hanger-on, at least he was useful.

The next wire that could go was the one from the aerosol containers and the power source; if there weren’t enough C4 to build a dog house, that might have been a bad move, but as it was, since they weren’t connected to the _timer,_ that meant that the actual explosion would be dispersing the chemicals, so disconnecting _them_ from the power shouldn’t be _too_ dangerous.

It was at that point that she started pulling out some of the wires that were essentially randomly soldered down, just to get a cleaner area to work with.

By the time she had narrowed it down to the base circuit and the failsafes, there were a bit less than five minutes left. Alright, she could do this. Granted, this was the _hard part_ , but what it came down to was dexterity and luck.

(Granted, ever since she got that finger blown off, her dexterity wasn’t _great_ , but, well, she had another hand, and a very helpful man assisting her. Luck was another issue; she’d take that up with the Fates herself, if this didn’t work out the way she hoped.)

“Well, now,” Ares said, “I was under the impression that this was supposed to be more colorful and confusing.”

Tisiphone rolled her eyes. Sure, if all you knew about bombs came from cop shows, you’d think it involved a lot of cutting different colored wires, solving riddles, and screaming into cellphones. In actuality, it was only a very boring sort of dangerous.

She stared at the bomb for a moment, letting her eyes glaze over slightly as she thought. The problem was, unfortunately, that there were two wires that needed to be cut simultaneously; one from the power supply directly to the C4, one from the power supply to the timer, and one from the timer to the C4, to complete the circuit—though she only needed to get the long one and one of the two attached to the timer to fully break the circuit. 

If the line from the power to the timer was cut, the line from the power to the C4 would overload, exploding. If the line from the power to the C4 was cut, she had no doubt that the timer lines would overload, _also_ exploding. The problem was, to _not_ explode, they needed to be disconnected _simultaneously_.

Unfortunately, in the construction of the bomb, both of these lines were far enough away from each other that they could not be cut using the same pair of wire cutters, _especially_ the sort that were in the deep part of the pliers on a multi-tool.

“So,” Ares said, “I presume that we have to cut these two wires at once?” He gestured with the steak knife, using it as a pointer. There were less than four minutes left on the timer.

“Mmmm.” Tisiphone nodded.

“We do this together, then?”

She nodded again, carefully threading the wire through the sharp gulch in the multi-tool. Her brain was the very quiet sort of blank right now, only taking in the here and now.

Ares positioned the steak knife. It wouldn’t be a _clean_ cut, but it didn’t have to be. “On your mark.”

Tisiphone closed her eyes, and took one deep breath. Another. She opened them back up, made sure of her positioning, and hummed, sharply, cutting the wire.

A moment later, when she hadn’t suddenly blown up, she chalked it up as a win, and untangled herself from the now-disabled explosive.

“So,” Ares said, tucking the steak knife into his jacket pocket, “Shall I call the bomb squad?”

Tisiphone gave him a flat look.

“Fair enough.” He pulled out his cellphone, and started prodding at it, “Would you like to share dinner after this?”

“Mmm.” She shrugged. Might as well, wasn’t so often that you got to _successfully_ disable explosive ordinance with a complete stranger. Plus, they had just spent the last hour and change—before the bomb—watching rich folks eating food they’d never be able to afford.

“Lovely.” He said. “Your choice, you did most of the heavy lifting, here.”

Tisiphone dug her phone out of her back pocket, and started poking around on the website for her favorite Chinese take-out place as Ares called the bomb squad.

\--

They end up back at her apartment, because she, frankly, couldn’t be bothered to deal with a sit-down restaurant, and Ares seemed pretty open to anything.

“Oh my,” Ares said, once she opened her door, and was immediately greeted by the dog, “That’s quite a big animal, is it part wolf?”

“Mmm.” The dog was half-wolf, actually, and very much looked it. Tisiphone set the takeout bags on the counter, and began unpacking little containers of rice and packets of duck sauce, spreading out the actual entrees over the counter top and hunting down some serving spoons.

Ares set down the unopened bottle of expensive champagne, liberated from the abandoned dinner party, on the counter. “May I put this in your fridge for the time being?”

Tisiphone nodded, pulling down a pair of bowls from a cabinet.

“Just checking.” Tisiphone was pretty sure that she doesn’t have anything embarrassing in there, other than some off-brand grapefruit-flavored hard seltzer.

Tisiphone grabbed a pair of the aforementioned hard seltzers from the fridge, and sets them on the coffee table, in front of the couch. If Ares wasn’t a fan of the second-best fizzy alcohol that her local drugstore has to offer, then there was just more for her.

She moved back to the food and begins dishing up, as Ares grabbed the bag of spring rolls, and fished one out.

“I must say—and I do not mean to make you uncomfortable with this—but I must say, you are quite an intriguing person.”

Tisiphone makes a questioning noise, spooning Ma Po Tofu over her small mountain of rice, making sure to get a generous amount of sauce.

“While I may be overstepping, I have to say, you’ve made _quite_ the impression on me this evening.” Tisiphone was pretty sure she knew where this is going, but she couldn’t exactly interrupt, even if she wished to. “Would it be a bit presumptuous to call this a date?”

Tisiphone grabbed the spring roll that Ares had been gesturing vaguely with, tucking it into the side of her bowl before snatching a packet of duck sauce. “Hm?”

“If you are not amenable,” He said, backtracking. She took a step closer, entering his personal space. “That’s fine, I just wished to mention that I would not be, ah, _opposed_ ,” She took another step closer. They weren’t quite _touching_ , but it was a close thing. “If we were to—to make this a romantic—”

Tisiphone leaned in a bit, staring him straight in the eyes. He wasn’t ugly, by any means, but he wasn’t what her sisters would consider attractive either—Meg tended towards skinny boys with tragic pasts who were allergic to wearing shirts correctly and had influencer haircuts, and Alecto was into anyone who looked like they owned a chain wallet and had a collection of QVC katanas. Ares, standing there in his cheap black suit with his overgrown mohawk, was much more endearing than anyone she’d clapped eyes on in a long while, _and_ he hadn’t said anything too insensitive about the whole _not speaking_ thing, which put him head and shoulders above most other people in her life.

Plus, she’d been able to rely on him to help her defuse a bomb. Which said a lot about him, character-wise.

Decision made, she quickly pecked him on the cheek, before moving back to the living room, and setting her bowl on the couch.

“Is that a yes?” He asked. “Just to clarify—I wouldn’t want to presume.”

Tisiphone walked back into the kitchen, grabbed him by the face, and planted a kiss directly on his lips. A short one, but definitely a sign of _exactly_ where her head was at.

“…Ah.” He said faintly, a smile crawling across his face as he blushed a bit. “That’s lovely.”

Tisiphone nodded, and made her way back to the couch as Ares dished up his food, picking up the remote and skipping through channels until she found something that looked like the perfect balance of ‘bad enough to be fun’ and ‘boring enough that it could be ignored for minutes at a time’.

After all, this _was_ a date, now. Wouldn’t want to get too distracted. 

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone wondering, they end up watching Yes, Madam.


End file.
